Fri Nov 16, 2012 at 07:00:00 AM CST

We in the "reality-based community" celebrated the election a week ago & then moved on to the serious business of moving this country forward. But those in the Fox News/GOP echo chamber just won't let it so. Whether they're trying to secede from the United States, blame the electorate for their loss, or try (once again!) to overturn an election via impeachment, they're spending a LOT more time trying to deny reality than they are trying to change hearts and minds.

Here are a few sad, sad examples from Alabama.

The Greater Birmingham Republican Women, coming off an election where the GOP was totally decimated in Jefferson County, published a newsletter promising to "BELIEVE AND NEVER GIVE UP!" It includes this noxious soup of racism, conspiracy theory, and McCarthyism:

The assault on Liberty we witnessed Tuesday, as was the case in 2008, was led primarily by those on urban "ObamaNation Plantations," those who depend on what Obama calls "redistributive justice" from the rest of us in order to survive. They account for almost 60 (SIXTY) percent of Obama's constituents, and Socialist Democrats are masters of co-opting (read: "buying") their allegiance and getting them to the polls. The good news is that about 10 million fewer Obama voters showed up in 2012, despite his billion-dollar campaign.

Words of Encouragement.Patriots, we were dealt an awful body blow on Tuesday, and the odds we face in our quest to restore Liberty and Rule of Law enshrined in our Declaration and Constitution may seem insurmountable.

Indeed, part of his problem throughout this campaign, and the one before it, is that he’s never been good at disguising his lack of respect for the American electorate. His changing positions, his evasions about them, his misrepresentations—they all, ultimately, came off as a challenge: I think you’re too stupid not to fall for this. And there are very few people who appreciate being told they’re dumb, or the person who said it.

There are, of course, other, larger problems for the Republican Party to grapple with over the next few years. But they’ll have trouble solving many of them if they can’t get past this and realize that Democrats don’t have to bribe voters—not when their opponents are so interested in insulting them.

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith

when the extremists are given so much press and airtime. Everyone becomes an extremist and we forget the common ground from which we can have a useful conversation. And we MUST have a conversation. While the right is arguing over whether or not to secede, the financial elites in this country have captured both political parties and they are about to shred the safety net and throw the economy back into a recession.

"[R]edistributive justice"? Don't these people realize that the only real redistribution for the last 30 years has been from the rest of us upward to the 1%. Over 93% of the increase in total national income for the year 2011 went to the upper 1%. Real wages for the average worker have been falling for the past 30 years also.

And, as far as buying allegiance, how about the hundreds of millions spent by the super-PACs to buy allegiance to the Republicans this year? With amazingly poor results, I might add. :)

To me, the biggest danger posed by this extremism is the potential for it to end up in violence. And violence from the right is a much bigger threat than violence from the left. They are the ones with all the guns.

Ben Franklin was right: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."